Are Shifting Gender Relations Perceived as a Social Status Threat? Experimental Evidence on the Effect of Perceptions of Gender Equality on Political Attitudes

The important role of the resistance to rising gender equality for the radical right backlash is increasingly acknowledged in recent research. However, few studies have systematically assessed how perceptions of women's increasing power lead to radical right attitudes on an individual level. On top, the other side of the same coin has rarely been integrated into existing research: We do not know how supporters of increasing gender equality perceive this trend and how it affects political attitudes. Does persisting inequality create dissatisfaction or is there a positive evaluation among women and/or feminists of how much progress has been made? This paper applies a survey experiment to look at both sides of this mechanism and create a more encompassing picture of how perceptions of the state of gender equality matter for political behavior. Using an experiment, this study can causally identify whether shifts in gender relations play a role for the transformation of political behavior in Western Europe, such as the increasing support for radical right and left parties. On the one hand, it investigates whether the increasing political representation of women evokes a social status threat among some individuals. A threat to social status, indicated by feelings of marginalization, has been shown to be highly predictive of radical right voting. On the other hand, the study assesses whether a persistently low representation of women leads to status dissatisfaction and societal pessimism for other individuals. These diverging reactions are theorized to either follow a distinction between men and women, or between feminists and anti-feminists of all genders. The latter distinction could turn out to be more meaningful because status perceptions do not have to be rooted in the expectation of one’s own losses or gains. They can also be shaped by value-based concerns, specifically about the increasing political power of women. The priming experiment, fielded in an original online survey in Germany in early 2022, manipulates how strong shifts towards more female representation in parliament appear to respondents. In sum, this paper provides evidence on how shifting gender relations are perceived subjectively and how these perceptions affect subjective social status, political discontent, modern sexism, and vote choice.